New England English

New England English collectively refers to the various distinct dialects and varieties of American English originating in the New England area.[1][2] Most of eastern and central New England once spoke the "Yankee dialect", and many of those accent features still remain in eastern New England, such as "R-dropping" (though this feature is receding among younger speakers today).[3][4][5] Accordingly, one linguistic division of New England is into Eastern versus Western New England English, as defined in the 1939 Linguistic Atlas of New England[6] and the 2006 Atlas of North American English (ANAE). The ANAE further argues for a division between Northern versus Southern New England English, especially on the basis of the cot–caught merger and /ɑr/ fronting (appearing twice, for example, in the phrase Park the car). The ANAE also categorizes the strongest differentiated New England accents into four combinations of the above dichotomies, simply defined as follows:

  • Northeastern New England English shows non-rhoticity, the cot–caught merger, and strong /ɑr/ fronting. It centers on Boston, Massachusetts, extending into New Hampshire and coastal Maine.[7]
  • Southeastern New England English shows non-rhoticity, no cot–caught merger, and no strong /ɑr/ fronting. It centers on Providence, Rhode Island and the Narragansett Bay.[7]
  • Northwestern New England English shows rhoticity, the cot–caught merger, and strong /ɑr/ fronting. It centers on Vermont.[7]
  • Southwestern New England English shows rhoticity, no (or a transitional state of the)[8] cot–caught merger, and no strong /ɑr/ fronting. It centers around the Hartford-Springfield area of Connecticut and western Massachusetts.[7]
New England English
RegionNew England
Early forms
DialectsEastern New England English, Western New England English
Latin (English alphabet)
Language codes
ISO 639-3–

Overview
Northeastern (NENE), Northwestern (NWNE), Southwestern (SWNE), and Southeastern (SENE) New England English represented here, as mapped by the Atlas of North American English on the basis of data from major cities
Dialect definitions
NENE is defined by: NWNE is defined by:
  • Widespread rhoticity
  • Full cot–caught merger → [ɑ]
  • Full horse–hoarse merger
  • Full father–bother merger → [ɑ~ä]
  • /ɑr/ → [äɹ~aɹ]
SWNE is defined by:
  • Widespread rhoticity
  • No or transitional cot–caught merger: [ɑ~ä] vs. [ɒ]
  • Full horse–hoarse merger
  • Full father–bother merger → [ɑ~ä]
  • /ɑr/ → [ɑɹ]
SENE is defined by:
  • Widespread non-rhoticity
  • No cot–caught merger: [ɑ~ä] vs. [ɔə]
  • Full horse–hoarse merger
  • Full father–bother merger → [ɑ~ä]
  • /ɑr/ → [ɑ(ɹ)][9]

Distinctions

New England English is not a single American dialect, but a collective term for a number of dialects and varieties that are close geographic neighbors within New England, but which differ on a spectrum that broadly divides New England English into a unique north versus south (specifically, a northern merger of the LOT and THOUGHT vowels, versus a southern merger of the LOT and PALM vowels), as well as a unique east versus west (specifically, an eastern pronunciation of the "r" sound only before vowels, versus a western pronunciation of all "r" sounds). Regarding the former feature, all of northern New England (most famously including Boston, but going as far southeast as Cape Cod and as far north as central Maine) historically merges the open and open-mid back rounded vowels (so that, for instance, pond and pawned are pronounced the same, which is commonly called the cot–caught merger), while southern coastal New England (including Rhode Island) historically maintains a noticeable distinction between these two vowels. Regarding the second feature, all of eastern New England is historically non-rhotic (famously pronouncing "car" like "kah"), while all of western New England is historically rhotic (or "r-ful"). Therefore, four combinations of these two features are possible, and coincidentally all four exist among New England English speakers, largely correlated with the exact geographic quadrant in New England in which a speaker was raised.

Commonalities

All of New England raises the tongue in the first element of the diphthong /aɪ/ before voiceless consonants; eastern New England, specifically, also raises the first element of /aʊ/ before voiceless consonants (commonly known as Canadian raising).[10]

All the local dialects of New England are also known for commonly pronouncing the unstressed sequences /tɪŋ/ and /tən/ (for example, found in "sitting" /ˈsɪtɪŋ/ or "Britain" /ˈbrɪtən/) as [ʔn̩] (New England pronunciation of "mountain"). This form of t-glottalization (especially the /tən/ form) is found commonly in other parts of the country as well, like in the word "Britain" (sometimes represented along the lines of Brih'in).

The extent that speakers raise the tongue in the English "short a" vowel varies widely in New England; however, across the board, New England speakers demonstrate a definite "nasal" short-a system, in which the vowel is always raised the absolute strongest whenever occurring before the nasal consonants /m/ and /n/[11] (so that, pan, for example, nearly approaches the sound of the word paean). In all of New England except Rhode Island and southern Connecticut, the short a may also be noticeably raised in many other environments.[12]

Vocabulary

The following terms originate from and are used commonly and nearly exclusively throughout New England:

As in the rest of the Northeast, sneakers is the primary term for athletic shoes, and common typically before adjectives or adverbs, wicked is used as an intensifier word (predominant in Northern and Eastern New England English, from Boston).[18] Many Boston-originating local terms have dispersed throughout Eastern New England and, prominently, all the rest of Massachusetts.

Eastern New England English
Main article: Eastern New England English

Eastern New England English encompasses Boston and Maine accents, and, according to some sources, the distinct Rhode Island accent. All Eastern New England English is famous for non-rhoticity, meaning it drops the r sound everywhere except before a vowel: thus, in words like car, card, fear, and chowder (listen). The phrase Park the car in Harvard Yard—dialectally transcribed [pʰak ðə ˈkʰaɹ‿ɪn ˈhavəd ˈjad]—is commonly used as a shibboleth, or speech indicator, for the non-rhotic Eastern New England dialect running from Boston north to Maine, and as far west as Worcester, which contrasts with the rhotic dialects in the vast majority of North America.[19] In all of Eastern New England, except Rhode Island, words like caught and cot are pronounced identically (both are often rounded, thus: [kʰɒt]), because those two vowel sounds have fully merged.[20] A phenomenon called Canadian raising occurs throughout Eastern New England, causing writer to have a different stressed vowel sound than rider, and for the verb house to have a different vowel sound than the noun house. /aʊ/ and /u/ have relatively back starting positions. The horse–hoarse distinction is still present to some extent in some areas, as well as the Mary–marry–merry distinction in many speakers.

Western New England English
Main article: Western New England English

Western New England English encompasses the accents of Vermont, western Massachusetts, and Connecticut. These accents are fully rhotic, meaning all r sounds are pronounced, as in most of North America. Here, /aʊ/ and /u/ have slightly fronted starting positions, and the Mary–marry–merry merger and horse–hoarse merger are fully complete. Western New England English exhibits the entire continuum for the cot–caught merger: a full merger is heard in its northern reaches (namely, Vermont) and a full distinction at its southern reaches (namely, coastal Connecticut), including a transitional area in the middle.[21] Western New England English is closely related to and influential on, but more conservative (i.e. preserving more historical features) than, the Inland North dialect which prevails farther west,[22] and which has altered away from Western New England English due to an entirely new chain shift of the vowels since the 1900s. Some Western New England English speakers do have these shift's features, though it is disputed whether New England influenced the Inland North dialect region.[23][24]

See also

References
  1. Labov (2006), p. 148.
  2. Boberg (2001), pp. 24-5.
  3. Stanford et al. (2014: 120)
  4. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:226)
  5. Stanford et al. (2012: 160-1)
  6. Boberg (2001), p. 3.
  7. Labov (2006), p. 225.
  8. Labov (2006), p. 61.
  9. Labov (2006), p. 227, 229, 231.
  10. Boberg, Charles (2010). The English Language in Canada: Status, History and Comparative Analysis. Cambridge University Press. p. 156. ISBN 9781139491440.
  11. Labov (2006), p. 84.
  12. Labov (2006), p. 82.
  13. Vaux, Bert and Scott Golder. 2003. "What do you call the long sandwich that contains cold cuts, lettuce, and so on?" The Harvard Dialect Survey. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Linguistics Department.
  14. Vaux, Bert and Marius L. Jøhndal. "What do you a call a store that is devoted primarily to selling alcoholic beverages?" Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes. University of Cambridge.
  15. Vaux, Bert and Scott Golder. 2003. "Which of these terms do you prefer for a sale of unwanted items on your porch, in your yard, etc.?" The Harvard Dialect Survey. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Linguistics Department.
  16. Vaux, Bert and Scott Golder. 2003. "What do you call a traffic situation in which several roads meet in a circle and you have to get off at a certain point?" The Harvard Dialect Survey. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Linguistics Department.
  17. Vaux, Bert and Scott Golder. 2003. "What is your *general* term for the rubber-soled shoes worn in gym class, for athletic activities, etc.?" The Harvard Dialect Survey. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Linguistics Department.
  18. Szelog, Mike. "Ayuh, the Northern New England Accent in a Nutshell." The Heart of New England.
  19. Wolfram, Walt; Natalie Schilling-Estes (1998). American English: Dialects and Variation. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-20487-9.
  20. Fitzpatrick, Jim (2006). "Beantown Babble (Boston, MA)". In W. Wolfram; B. Ward (eds.). American Voices: How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-2109-5.
  21. Boberg (2001), pp. 19-27.
  22. Nagy, Naomi; Roberts, Julie (2004). "New England phonology". In Edgar Schneider; Kate Burridge; Bernd Kortmann; Rajend Mesthrie; Clive Upton (eds.). A handbook of varieties of English. Volume 1: Phonology. Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 270–281.
  23. McCarthy, Corrine (2010) "The Northern Cities Shift in Real Time: Evidence from Chicago". University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 15 : Iss. 2, Article 12.
  24. McCarthy, Natalie (2004). THE NORTHERN CITIES SHIFT AND LOCAL IDENTITY IN A SUBURBAN CLEVELAND GROUP (PDF). p. 7.

Further reading
  • Stanford, James. 2019. New England English: Large-scale acoustic sociophonetics and dialectology. Oxford University Press. 367 pages.
  • Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; and Boberg, Charles (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-016746-7.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  • Boberg, Charles (2001). "The Phonological Status of Western New England". American Speech. 76 (1): 3–29. doi:10.1215/00031283-76-1-3.
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